Meridional French


Meridional French, also referred to as Francitan, is the regional variant of the French language spoken in the area of Marseille, Avignon and Toulouse. It is influenced by the Occitan language.
There are speakers of Meridional French in all generations, but the accent is most marked among the elderly, who often speak Occitan as their first language.

Characteristics

The phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of Occitan have all influenced Meridional French, but the phonological effects are perhaps the most salient by producing the characteristic accent, which is used by speakers of Meridional French. Those effects include the following:
Meridional French is also subject to a phonological law known as the Law of Position in which mid-vowels are subject to allophonic variation based on the shape of their syllables; they are realised as mid-open in closed syllables and as mid-close in open syllables. The phenomenon has been shown to be somewhat more complex, however, by Durand, Eychenne, and Chabot. The principle is strictly adhered to by speakers of Meridional French, in contrast to those of other varieties of French.

Phonology

  • Lexical stress is used, unlike the prosodic stress of Standard French.
  • Nasal vowels have not changed but are still pronounced as in traditional Parisian French or with a nasal consonant after the vowel: enfant, pain, timbre, bon and brun.
  • The "e caduc" is always pronounced by older speakers, even at the end of words. For example, cerise is pronounced, tête is pronounced, and it is sometimes pronounced even if there is no e; ciel .
  • merge with, the resulting phonemes being pronounced open-mid in stressed syllables and close-mid in unstressed syllables. As a result, both notre and nôtre are pronounced as and both jeune and jeûne are as.

    Vocabulary

A number of words are peculiar to Meridional French, for example, péguer, chocolatine, cagade or flûte.
Some phrases are used with meanings that differ from those of Standard French. For example, s'il faut, literally meaning, is used to mean "perhaps", as a calque of the Occitan se cal, which would be rendered in Standard French as peut-être.

Internal variation

Many sub-varieties of Meridional French exist, with distinctive features.
Examples of diatopic variation include lexical differences between the French spoken in Toulouse, as described by, and that spoken in Bayonne, described by.
Diastratic variation is also extant in Meridional French. The sociolects spoken by the Jews of Gascony, whose large set of special vocabulary used only within the group has been linguistically described by, is one of the most distinctive sub-dialects of Meridional French.